Christendom Quotes



Toleration is a relative term. The Muslim Moors made Christians (and Jews) pay a special tax. At times they were forced to wear special clothing so that they could be readily identified. And they could not build churches larger or taller than the smallest mosque in the community. At times, their occupations were restricted but at other times Christians and Jews were appointed to the highest positions like Vizier. The Inquisition, in contrast, forced all Muslims (and Jews) to leave the country without any of their property or money or be tortured and killed—usually by burning at the stake unless of course that they converted to Christianity.


Different Christian European powers moved in and out of alliances with each other and with the Islamic Ottoman Empire. So Christians were not unified and whenever a Christian country was at war with the Muslims some Christians perceived it as an assault on Christianity—except that there were Christian allies of the Muslims. Later many Muslims would see any conflict with a Christian country as an attack in Islam even when Muslim nations were allied with the Christians as was Turkey at the end of the 20th century. Turkey was a member of NATO and was therefore seen as traitors to Islam by some Muslims. There has always been this tendency to see conflict in terms of religious or ethnic hostility where convenient.


To justify slaveholding in one’s own mind, religion, culture, values, concepts of write & wrong all have to be twisted and when a substantial group of people do that for a number of decades, the do not form a different race but they certainly do become a different cultural subgroup. The hypocrisy of slavery and a free society is the ultimate twist of logic. Also, many modern psychologists have analyzed the extremely cruel and inhuman tortures and punishment that slave owners meted out and observed as strongly suggested abnormally sadistic perversions present in so many.